SWR paid out £8m compensation for delayed trains

South Western Railway paid out more than £8m last year in compensation to passengers for delayed or cancelled trains.

The company became the first failing train operator taken over and brought back into public ownership by the government in May 2025.

According to the Department for Transport (DfT), it spent £8.25m on payouts to rail users under its Delay, Repay scheme.

SWR said reasons for delayed or late running trains included "extreme weather conditions and a number of specific infrastructure and trespass incidents".

About a third of the operator's trains did not run on time in the year 2024-2025, well below its own punctuality target.

The DfT said fewer than half of passengers actually claimed the refunds they were entitled to.

Rail campaigners also said when taxis and hotel payments for stranded passengers were added, the true amount could be significantly more.

A spokesman for South Western Railways Watch, Jeremy Varnes, said: "I estimate that in the last year, Delay Repay has actually amounted to about £15m, and that's with the 85% increase in claims in the last year.

"It's an extraordinary amount of money which ultimately taxpayers and passengers are paying for."

Under the scheme, passengers can claim compensation if their train is delayed by fifteen minutes or more.

The longer the delay, the greater the amount of compensation, ranging from 25% of a single ticket for a 15 minute delay, to 100% of any ticket for two hours or more.

Daily Telegraph travel correspondent Simon Calder said the amounts paid out showed "whoever owns SWR, there are going to be problems".

"The increase in Delay, Repay claims signifies everything from poor infrastructure, which of course is simply inherited from the Victorians, and on top of that issues with rolling stock and staff shortages," he said.

He told Politics South: "The government may possibly come to regret all the big claims it's made about bringing train operators back into public ownership.

"Simply bringing it into public ownership does not mean that we're suddenly going to discover that all the trains to and from London Waterloo run on time."

In a statement, SWR said there were lots of reasons for delayed or late running trains "and it is only right we compensate our customers for the disruption to their journeys".

"We know delays and cancellations are frustrating and we are determined to reduce the number of disruptive incidents our customers face," they said.

"However, when things do go wrong, our teams are also focused on recovering faster to keep services moving."

A DfT spokesperson said: "While performance this summer was impacted by issues unrelated to public ownership, traincrew-related cancellations were reduced by almost 84% and the number of trains running with fewer carriages than planned fell by around 40%, helping to deliver a more reliable service for passengers.

"There is more to do, but this progress shows how bringing services into public ownership is benefitting passengers".